Today in Iraq

War News for March 7, 2004 Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers wounded near Habaniyah. Bring 'em on: Three Jordanian truck drivers killed near Ramadi. Bring 'em on: Four Iraqis civilians killed, two policemen wounded in RPG attack on Mosul police station. Bring 'em on: Iraqi policeman shot and wounded by insurgents near Mahmoudiya. (Last two paragraphs.) Bring ‘em on: One US contractor wounded in Katyusha attack on Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Car bomb explodes near Green Zone compound in Baghdad. South Korea protests detention of Korean journalists in Baghdad. Peshmerga militia refuses fashion maven L. Paul Bremer's demand to disband. Civilian deaths leave Iraqi families bitter. Losing control in Iraq. "The glitch in finalizing the constitution showed that despite 130,000 troops and billions of dollars in committed aid, Washington can no longer control events in Iraq absolutely. Among those who balked at signing was Ahmad Chalabi, a Pentagon favorite whose Iraqi National Congress has received millions of dollars in U.S. support." CPA still doesn't have the detainee problem sorted out. "The American authorities say they are trying to help people locate detained relatives, even posting prisoner lists on the Internet. But computers are strange things to most Iraqis, and many families still have no idea where their men are. Often they were led away in the middle of the night, with bags over their heads and no explanation. Many people have said that when they asked soldiers where their family members were being taken, they were told to shut up. A few hundred women have also been detained. And complicating the families' searches, there are several major prisons and hundreds of smaller jails and bases across Iraq." Karl Rove sends Justice Department team to Baghdad to prepare Saddam Hussein show trial for Lieutenant AWOL's election campaign. Commentary Opinion: "How can it be that we aren't training Iraqis to protect themselves against the most urgent threats? Senior Bush officials never seemed to have envisioned this kind of continuing postwar violence, even though experts warned repeatedly that Saddam's fall would create chaos. Not long before the start of the Iraq war, a senior administration official told me: 'The one risk that strikes me as just totally exaggerated out of all proportion is the so-called risk of instability when Saddam goes.'" Opinion: "While the neo-cons’ thesis says nothing about reality, it says a great deal about the neo-cons themselves. First, it tells us that they are ideologues. All ideologies posit that certain things must be true, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. That evidence is to be suppressed, along with the people who insist on pointing to it. Sadly, the neo-cons have been able to do exactly that within the Bush administration, and the mess in Iraq is the price." Analysis: "The nature and degree of involvement of Baathist Party remnants, foreign nationals and religious extremists remains a matter of educated guesswork. 'The short answer is we don't know what we should know. It does not appear to me that we have a real clear idea of who's doing this, how it's being orchestrated, how it all works,' said Jeffrey White, who spent 34 years with the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and related groups, focusing on Iraq…" Opinion: "Last week may have provided a useful glimpse into the future of Iraq. Horrifying bombings killed more than 180 people, and no one in charge was quite sure who had done it. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric, denounces an interim constitution for straying too far from Islamic law; for their part, Shiite politicians worry that this same constitution is pulling a fast one on them, so what was a deal on Monday is a dead letter by Friday. The Americans are perplexed. Everybody else is outraged." Opinion: "You all saw Bush play dress-up and land on the aircraft carrier and stand there, the helmet under his arm just like an Ace from the top of a bloody sky. The aircraft carrier had to be turned around so the skyline of San Diego wouldn't be seen. Now he has his World Trade Center commercial out there and a lot of decent people regard it as an insult." Casualty Reports Local story: Iowa soldier wounded in Iraq. 86-43-04. Pass it on.